Benjamin Thigpen. Nomad, born in the United States, naturalized in France. After
dropping out of conservatory, he studied literature and aesthetics and travelled
extensively. He gradually returned to music though electronic composition.
He creates music for loudspeakers – as a composer and as a performing electronic
musician. He composes in various European electroacoustic studios (GRM, VICC, EMS,
STEIM) and gives concerts throughout the world. He has taught computer music at
Ircam (Paris), at the University of Washington (United States), and at the Conservatorio
di Cuneo (Italy); he currently teaches at Arts2, in Belgium. He has put out two solo CDs
– human for scale (EMF Media 2005) and divide by zero (Sub Rosa 2011); the third,
flux, will be released on empreintes DIGITALes in 2017. He performs in the duo Rust
with instrument inventor and composer Jean-François Laporte, in Fluid Identities with
cellist Benjamin Carat, and in Les Frères Bobine with composer and electronic
musician Stefano Bassanese.
He thinks that music is not a language but a lived visceral experience, and that it is not
the art of sound but the art of the transcendence of sound.